


A Fairytale for the End Times

by LittleRaven



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 03:16:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12290052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: On the last night before they leave Narnia, Susan visits Prunaprismia.





	A Fairytale for the End Times

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nabielka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/gifts).



> A slight melding of movies and books. Ages are changed so that Susan here is fifteen, Prunaprismia somewhere in her late teens to twenty.

In the tower of her new bedroom—and prison—she waits, not a princess wrongfully imprisoned but an illegitimate queen. Prunaprismia has had the upbringing any child might have, if they are lucky: an education on the fairytales of Narnia. She knows she does not fit the criteria of its good kings and queens. Full-grown and with a babe in her arms. A conqueror’s descendant. Though that hasn’t stopped Caspian. All those human rulers of old; they’d begun as children, and might as well have left as such—no children of their own to replace them, to continue the rule so beloved by the stories. Was it time for her to do the same, in a manner more ignominious? She clutches her son tighter, till he wakes in tears. Prunaprismia rocks him close, closer than the fictions stirring anew in her heart. Whether these monarchs are good in truth remains to be seen.

The queen would have her think so. The other. One of the others, she reminds herself. Susan the Gentle.

Who will arrive any moment now.

Prunaprismia sets her child down at last. She moves toward her red-curtained window, gazes down at the veritable stable in the courtyard below. The castle has certainly had no trouble moving back in time, at least as far as she can tell. All the neighing, the braying—the animal noises—is now intermixed with voices from those same—Animals. And satyrs, and fauns, and, and. She’s not sure she can recall them all.

A voice, the sound of a wooden door against stone, bring her back. Prunaprismia tenses, awake with the expectation of gloating, of some ethereal creature as fine as a clear night in winter, a walking goddess or terror.

The girl is a little younger than her, for a legend. Hair as black as the stories, if not quite as long. Pink skin, someone no stranger to the outdoors. Of course. Apart from being a friend to Beasts, Susan the Gentle had been a fine archer. Is. Prunaprismia automatically thinks of her own crossbow. Not a story, but a real skill to practice, days under the sun, as much as her swordsman husband. She pushes the dead man away. It appears that there is something real to Susan after all. A beauty of this world.

Greetings duly given, they get straight to how little she’ll be keeping of her life. It’s more than she imagined. More difficult to understand than death, if not as cruel; though right now, sitting across the gaze of the queen with this news between them, death seems less onerous.

“And if I want to stay?” she says. If she doesn’t want to lose more than she already has. Her home, the comforts, what she can give her baby. The eyes blue as the tides she's been taught to fear--they must be real too--held her own, right here and now.

“I’m not the person to ask. But Aslan might let you.”

That seems questionable to Prunaprismia. A rival monarch, deposed that she is, with another potential heir? Only if every other Telmarine leaves. Only perhaps. Before she can say so, Susan continues, with a slight hesitation.

“It’ll be all right if you do, you know. I’m leaving too.”

Said with all the calm in the world, as if they were not talking of disappearing from it.

“Again?” Prunaprismia’s voice is faint. Really, not everyone could get used to this business of appearing and vanishing like a dream. Or nightmare, as she supposes is the case for her in the eyes of Narnia.

Susan laughs; the sound is shaky, almost brittle. It both does and does not fit a girl who looks to have just flowered, and for a moment Prunaprismia can see the woman underneath.

“Again. It’s...” she stops, breathes in, and a calm seems to take her over. Her next words are steady. “Narnia isn’t really mine anymore.”

Nor is it hers. It never was. Prunaprismia wishes for a cup of tea, a cushion, and a blanket. All of which she could have almost instantly; she must not really wish it, then. She wishes she could find comfort in the material, because right now it’s hard to find it elsewhere.

She’d hide that, but what for? No longer a queen, it seems silly to try and pretend to be unfazed. The other queen—the true one here, if she’s finally getting Narnia right—had come to...well, Prunaprismia isn’t sure anymore. To reassure her. To tell her to leave, as nicely as her reputation had described her to be. Let her, then. Let her provide the reason and stability here. She’s on Susan’s territory, in more ways than one.

“So you say. It sounds different from here, though I admit my ability to assess the situation is quite limited.” She gestures towards the window. Prunaprismia hasn’t left her tower since the castle was taken.

“Do you want to see it, then?”

Does she want to see what? The Animals, the Centaurs, the way her home isn’t her home anymore? How it’s been taken over by dreams she stopped having years ago? Though it hasn’t been that long. It just seems it. The age difference between her and Susan looks small, but Prunaprismia is older and far away, mired in time like this other girl will never be.

Susan will never be old. She will disappear into the fantasy of some cold night warmed by a fire, just as she has before. Here in Narnia, and even, apparently, outside of it. Prunaprismia is sure this visit will provide plenty material for her own nights to come. Although she can’t assume there will be firesides in them.

When she finally speaks, she smiles. “I don’t know that I’d fit. It’s not quite where a human woman belongs. That seems a rule.”

Prunaprismia can almost see Susan drawing in the sigh rather than let it out. Her dream, breathing, and apparently having a difficult time dealing with her. Less ethereal, but just as lovely.

When the queen finally speaks, it’s a little wry. “We do belong here. At least for a little while. Really,” she rushed on suddenly, “I suppose it’s not too different from living and dying. Just-”

“Not too comforting,” says Prunaprismia. But true, sort of. Which provides its own sort of comfort. “At least it’s not actual death.” For her and her son. The thought of Susan dying never appears.

Something else does. “Where will you be going? Where will I-” she stops. The restoration of Narnia was for Narnia. And Caspian. Is there any part for her?

“It’s the same world,” Susan says slowly, biting her lip. “Not the same place, I think.”

So, she thinks. It ends, and it ends. Life and fantasy together.

“That isn’t true now, though. We’re both here still.”

Prunaprismia looks at Susan’s sudden smile. She gets up to close the curtains over the window.


End file.
